Stopping WhatsApp Won’t Stop Terrorists

Zeynep Tufekci

NOV. 20, 2015

IS the ability to send encrypted messages making it hard to stop terrorists? That’s what many intelligence officials and politicians have been saying about rumors that the terrorists in France communicated using encrypted services like WhatsApp or Apple iMessage.

For decades, government officials have been warning about the threat of criminals and terrorists “going dark” — becoming impenetrable to law enforcement surveillance — through the use of encryption. There is a bill in Britain calling for weaker encryption. Here in the United States, Senator John McCain says he will hold hearings in the Senate and propose legislation on this topic, while Hillary Rodham Clinton warned that encryption was a “particularly tough problem.”

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Continua qui: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/opinion/stopping-whatsapp-wont-stop-terrorists.html